Complications
by R-I-C-A-R-D
Summary: A classic urban legend comes to life in the Wards of the Citadel and somebody close to Shepard falls victim. Work in progress. Reviews welcome.
1. An Urban Legend Lives

**Chapter 1  
****An Urban Legend Lives**

_I didn't ask for this at all  
But my back's against the wall  
__I didn't for this at all  
But my back's against the wall  
__I didn't ask for this, for this, for this, at all_

The Butterfly Effect, _Worlds on Fire_

Consciousness returned slowly. Painfully. Among the first sensations to register in her addled mind was that of intense, numbing cold. The cold seemed to seep into and through her skin, flesh and muscle before settling deep into her bones, embracing her in its icy grip.

_What happened to me? _The question was born from a morass of sludgy half-formed thoughts and images. The red-blue lighting of Chora's, her usual haunt when conducting business. _I was supposed to meet somebody. For a job. _The rapid tempo of the electronic dance music, the heavy bass signature seeming to pulse through the very air. The dancers writhing seductively atop their podiums, bringing out the very worst carnal instincts of every male of every species in Council Space. Fistfuls of credits waved by leering drunks with over-bright fevered eyes.

As the cold enfolded her ever more deeply within itself, she fought to open her eyes but, for the moment at least, she lacked the proper muscle control needed to accomplish this. The gnawing rat of panic and its twin, fear, began chewing at her as she fought to return to full wakefulness and mobility.

_The guy at the bar...the well-dressed man. He bought me a drink...don't normally drink on the job..._

The man, tall, clean shaven, with eyes that, in the weird lighting could have been blue or black or brown, met her own for an instant before looking away and again meeting hers. Classic flirtatious body language. As she passed by him on her way to her usual booth at the rear of the club, where she had a fine view of anybody leaving or entering, he stepped away from the bar and asked, "May I buy you a drink?"

She shot him a quick glance as she answered, "Thanks but no, I'm supposed to meet somebody."

Unruffled, the man merely smiled and nodded as he extended his right hand towards her. He wore a gold ring set with onyx on the ring finger. "Charles Sinclair, I'm the person you're meeting. You are Bethany Shepard, correct?"

Beth muttered under her breath, "I so hate these blind meetings," before she shook his hand.

Sinclair gestured at the vacant stool next to his. "So. That drink?"

She nodded. And that's the last coherent thing she could recall.

_Motherless son of a...fracker drugged me! Then he did what? Stuff me into walk-in freezer? What is this guy, a deranged serial killer who keeps his victims on ice so he can kill them at his leisure?_

With a gasp of chill air, Bethany forced her eyes open, squinting at the harsh white light stabbing down at her from the ceiling. A strangled yelp escaped her lips as she fought to sit upright, icy cold water sloshing over the sides of the tub and sluicing along her bare skin. As she moved and the blood began flowing, she felt intense pins and needles stabbing her all over...tub? Bare skin? "What the frack?" she said and coughed.

Teeth chattering and shivering uncontrollably, Bethany Amber-Louise Shepard looked around at her surroundings, fear and panic subsiding slightly, replaced with surprise and shock. She was naked (what _had_ been done to her?) and lying in a full-length bath tub filled with frigid water and ice. As she moved, more water overspilled the lip of the tub, pooling on the blue and white tile of the bathroom floor.

_How'd I get here? Where _is _here? _Holding her arms and hands out before her, trembling as they moved, she saw that her skin was marbled with gooseflesh and tinged a faint blue. As she rotated her hands before her face, she saw that the tips of her fingers were wrinkled from having been in the water for too long a time.

As she fought off the effects of the drug used to render her unconscious and as her body began to feel sensations again, Bethany became aware of an ache in her left side and twisted around to see if she'd been injured at all. Fingers still half-numb and trembling traced over a cut in her lower back; her semi-numbed fingertips felt along the incision, encountering several plasmid stitches.

_Oh my holy frack!_

Heart suddenly pounding in her chest, Bethany pulled a deep breath into her lungs, feeling the ache sharpen as she did and yelled as loudly as she could, "Somebody help me!" Her voice echoed off the tiled walls of the bathroom, seemed to mock her efforts. "Please! I need help in here!"

Tears, hot against the coolness of her face, fell from her eyes as the full impact of what had happened - what had been _done _to her - set in: drugged while in Chora's, taken to a med centre somewhere, prepped for surgery _Please don't let them have raped me as well,_ she silently pleaded as she began sobbing in terror. Prepped for surgery and then...then _they took a kidney!_

"Somebody please help me!" Bethany screamed and winced as the screams rebounded. She attempted to rise, bracing her forearms along the sides of the tub and set her feet on the bottom of the tub. Muscles twitching and jerking, she fell back. As she did, she heard something drop into the water with a _plop_.

Lying on the floor of the tub was a datapad. It must have been left on the side of the tub by whoever had done this to her. Plunging her hands back into the water and ice, Bethany retrieved the electronic device and wiped the screen clear of water.

A short message had been left for her:

Do not panic  
Do not try to move  
Medics have been summoned and will be there shortly  
Rest assured you will make a full recovery

Bethany drew in another deep breath and screamed. This time it was scream of rage and frustration. She threw the datapad at the far wall with all her strength and it shattered, pieces of black plastic and circuitry bouncing off the floor tiles before coming to rest.

As she sank back into the water, spent, she heard voices and running footsteps from outside.

**A/N: **Was replaying the Dr Saleon sidequest for the nth time and started thinking about that old urban legend about the guy who wakes up in a bath tub filled with ice and learns he's missing a kidney and I thought to myself "what would happen if the person decided to find the people and get the kidney back?" As you do. Oh some suspension of disbelief, please, for the good of us all.


	2. Plainclothes Morons

**Chapter 2  
****Plainclothes Morons**

The hospital bed at the Sacred Heart Teaching Hospital was more comfortable than the ice-filled bath tub, but that was the only good thing about her current position. A week after she had been found in the bathroom of Room 1313 (and wasn't _that _a good omen?) of the Hotel Claremont in Ward Two, Bethany lay recovering in a private room of the premier teaching hospital in the Citadel.

Her brother, first human Spectre, had dropped everything when he'd been informed that his darling older sister was the unwilling donor of a kidney and had arranged the best medical care for her. Word was that he'd been in the middle of a briefing with the Council when he received the news and ran out on them while the turian had been in mid-rant about something or other.

The medical staff had run a full suite of tests on her - MRI, CAT scan and bunch of other tests with weird acronyms just to make sure her left kidney was _all _she'd been relieved of. To everybody's great relief, hers especially, this seemed to be the case.

Within hours of her being admitted, she'd been questioned by a pair of C-Sec detectives: a turian named Chellick who radiated a reassuring aura of experience and competency as well as an overweight, sweaty human detective, Hardcastle who radiated an aura of borderline incompetence...as well as stale sweat and old food.

Hardcastle, through his questioning of her activities on the night of the 'alleged kidney theft' seemed to imply that she was somehow to blame for waking up naked and half-frozen and minus her kidney. "Do you ordinarily make a habit of letting men you don't know buy you drinks, Ms Shepard?"

"Alleged kidney theft?" Bethany repeated, frowning. "Detective, there's _nothing _'alleged' about it. I'm missing a kidney! I had a full set when I went into Chora's the other night and now I don't! And while you're standing here asking stupid questions, whoever did it is probably planning to do it again!"

Taking over the questioning, Chellick asked in a soothing voice, "Can you tell us anything about the man who bought you the drink?"

"He said his name was Charles Sinclair. I'm guessing that's an alias. He's about six-two, maybe two hundred, two twenty pounds. Black hair. Eyes...hard to tell with that lighting in Choras but probably brown. He had a gold onyx ring on his right hand."

Hardcastle snorted and drifted over to stand beside the suite of monitoring equipment the witness was tethered to. "He's probably not even the main guy, the capo, the big cheese."

"He's the only lead you have so I suggest you quit jerking me around and go find him!" Bethany snapped and reached for the plastic cup of water by on the bedside table. She seemed to be a lot thirstier now and wondered if that was due to having her body's waste management systems operating at only half capacity.

"We'll keep you informed of our progress, Ms Shepard," Chellick said and the two left the room.

Bethany stared up at the ceiling, clenching and unclenching her fists. She felt so angry. Angry and violated. She'd had a string of visitors since being admitted and they'd left her bunches of flowers, fruit baskets, helium-filled balloons with various get well soon messages printed on them. She wanted to hurl the lot out the window but lacked the strength to more than glare at them.

Flowers? What she really wanted, _needed_ was a lead on the group responsible for her current predicament...and a sidearm. Bethany smiled and had anybody been in the room with her, they would have felt fear.

"You're looking much better," her brother's voice spoke from the doorway of her room. Augustus Shepard, paragon of virtue, shining example of the best of humanity, stepped into the room. He wore the black and grey fatigues worn normally by the crew of Alliance vessels and carried a large pink teddy bear in his hands.

"What is that?" Bethany asked.

"I saw him in the gift shop and thought of you. Isn't he cute?" the Spectre asked, using his hand to wave the bear's paw at Bethany.

"Oh shoot me now," she grumbled as he set the bear down on the table and leaned over to kiss her forehead.

"How are you feeling?" he asked and pulled up a chair beside her bed.

"Oh, I'm just _peachy!_ Thank you_ so much_ for asking!" she spat at him. He just smiled and nodded tolerantly as though he was above reacting to such petty displays. He took her hand and squeezed it. She yanked it away.

"Does C-Sec have any leads on the perpetrators?" her brother asked.

Bethany rolled her eyes. "C-Sec couldn't find naked boobs in a strip club! Forget them. What leads have _you_ discovered?" she asked.

He shook his head, "Nothing so far. I've put out feelers for any information on organ harvesting but so far..." he shrugged apologetically.

Bethany hissed a breath out through clenched teeth. "Why harvest organs from living people at all? Can't they just clone them in a lab? Heck, they could even pay off morgue staff and just harvest organs right from cadavers during autopsies."

"How soon until you can go home?" Shepard asked. His sister shrugged.

"Hopefully tomorrow or the next day. Essentially I'm fine and the doctors tell me that plenty of people lead normal healthy lives with only the one kidney." She rolled her eyes again. "That's not even the point. The _point_ is that some SOB took something of mine and I'm getting it back!"

Shepard smiled slightly. "You do realise that the kidney has likely already found a new home by now? It was probably shipped off-station even."

Sitting upright in bed, feeling the stitches in her back pull slightly, Bethany grabbed her brother's forearm tightly and looked directly into his eyes. When she spoke, each word was underscored with tightly reined-in rage, waiting to be unleashed, "I'm conducting my own investigation. And when I find these people, and I _will _find them, violence of a scale not seen since the Krogan Rebellions is going to ensue."

Wearing a look of concern on a face marked by lack of sleep, Shepard said, "Beth, just be careful. If anything happened to you..."

Bethany gestured down at herself with her right hand, "In case it's escaped your attention, something already_ has _happened to me!" Bethany released his arm and lay back against the pillow. Injecting some lightness into her voice she asked, "So, how's that girlfriend of yours?"

Shepard smiled and nodded. "Ash is fine, thank you for asking. She's babysitting that dog of yours."

"Tell her to give him the bone in the freezer. He likes to chew things." She smiled and said, "I'm going to let him chew on something living before I'm through."

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear your threats of violence against parties unspecified," her brother said and frowned.

Bethany chuckled and pat her brother's arm. Their conversation moved on to other things.

---

"I'd like to make an appointment to see Barla Von," Bethany said to the young man at the reception are of Von's financial planning establishment in the Presidium. She'd been out of the hospital fewer than five hours but already, Bethany was at work tracking down her kidney thief. The time spent recovering in the hospital had almost driven her to distraction - every day, every _hour _she spent there, the trail grew colder and she had scant few leads to begin with. It was time to get to work, starting with the premier information broker on the Citadel. A known agent for the mysterious Shadow Broker, the volus Barla Von was a financial wizard without peer. But mainly he traded in information.

Wearing her red and black Colossus hardsuit and conspicously armed, Bethany drew plenty of concerned looks from the passers by. The Presidium wasn't a place Bethany frequented very often. She preferred the Wards, felt connected to the ebb and flow of life there - the sometimes violent mixing of various cultures both human and alien. The Wards always seemed to be changing, sometimes hourly as new residents moved in and established businesses, eager to start new lives for themselves or expand existing markets.

The Presidium felt too 'safe' and a little dull by comparison. Up here there were no krogan running illegal card games in darkened corners, no turian ex-military officers selling the Hierarchy's equipment on the black market and no real excitement. The upside was that, up here, one wasn't likely to be drugged and relieved of one's organs.

The young man in the reception area, eyes rimmed with black eyeliner, glanced at his computer, tapped a few keys. "Mister Von will be available in two days," he said.

"Mmm," Bethany mused and reached a hand into the cargo pocket on her hardsuit's left thigh and came out with a pair of thousand-credit chits. She bounced them in the palm of her gloved hand a few times before saying, "These are yours if you can get me an appointment now."

The young man's eyes seemed to grow larger as he pressed a few more keys. "Did I say in two days? I meant two _hours!"_

Bethany tossed him the credits and he made them disappear into his suit jacket with stunning speed. "Pleasure doing business with you," Bethany said and left.

Not surprisingly, hers wasn't the first case of its kind on the Citadel. Seated at a public extranet terminal with a steaming cup of coffee by her right hand, Bethany had run a search for any reports of people waking up in bath tubs minus a particular organ and got several dozen hits. How this could happen so often with C-Sec seemingly unable to stop it boggled her mind. _Unless they're in on it,_ a voice, every conspiracy theorist's best friend whispered in her mind.

The vast majority of the victims had been men, all human. They all offered a similar story when questioned: a beautiful woman had offered to buy them a drink, they accepted and the next thing they were aware of was the above mentioned bath tub/kidney scenario. The men all described different women. In two cases, the women were asari. _So this is a large operation if they're using a rotating staff of girls_. What this amounted to was that it made tracking the initial contacts difficult. While Chora's Den featured heavily throughout, the victims had been snared at other places as well and all had been left in differing hotels.

Sipping her coffee, Bethany made list

1. Canvass staff/regulars at Chora's (Note, bring tons of bribe money)

2. Canvass staff at Claremont hotel (Note, see above re bribe money)

3. Talk to inside man at C-Sec for access to database (may need to sell other kidney to pay for bribes)

Sitting back in the chair, Bethany felt the dull ache in her lower back where the surgery had been carried out. Funny how she never appreciated her internal organs until she was missing one but there it was, she missed her kidney. She knew she had less than no chance of recovering it and probably wouldn't want it back inside her even if she _did_ find it but it was the principle of the thing.

Her chrono bleeped and she got up to leave for her meeting with Barla Von, gulping down the dregs of the coffee as she went.

Bethany settled herself into the comfortably padded chair in Von's office, having reluctantly surrendered her weapons with the young man at the desk. She imagined she cut an odd figure - fully armoured and ready for combat within the confines of the oh so civilised Presidium.

As Von spoke, his breath wheezed in and out of the respirator built into his environment suit. The sound gave Bethany the creeps. It was like some ancient steam engine come to life with homicidal tendencies.

"So, what can I do for you today, Earthclan?"

"I'm looking for information on the illegal trade of bodily organs here on the Citadel," Bethany began.

"I see. And what is your precise interest, Ms Shepard?" the volus replied.

Bethany leaned forward, keeping her gaze fixed on the eyepieces set into the front of the volus' suit. "I want to find the people who took my kidney...and perform some surgery on them. I don't think I need to elaborate further."

"Indeed, Earthclan. I may have some information pertaining to your...situation but it will not come cheaply, I must inform you."

"Of course," Bethany said dryly and leaned back in her seat. She could probably raise some quick credits selling some old gear she didn't use any more.

With another intake of breath, Von went on, "While I have no solid information on the party responsible itself," Von raised a hand to forestall the outburst from the woman across from him, "I can put you in touch with a former C-Sec agent who is also looking into these incidents."

"Who?" Bethany asked leaning forward, elbows on knees.

Von might have been smiling when he replied, "First the matter of payment. Ten thousand credits."

"Frack off!" Bethany spat and surged from her seat. As she headed out the door, Von called out to her, "How badly do you want to find these people, Earthclan? Ten thousand is really quite reasonable."

Bethany paused by the exit, hand on the green glowing panel. Her hand fell to her side and her shoulders slumped. She felt tired all of a sudden. The weight of every one of her thirty-five years seemed to press into her all at once. A tear slipped from one eye and she angrily brushed it aside. Turning back to the volus she ground out, "Fine. Ten thousand it is. I'll just have to tell Mister Darcy we'll be eating two minute noodles for the rest of the year!"

---

Garrus Vakarian, former agent with Citadel Security sat opposite the tall auburn haired woman at Flux. A tall glass of turian liquor, purplish-red beneath the lighting sat untouched before him. The human sipped from a glass of whisky. When Garrus had learned the woman's identity, his mandibles flared in surprise.

"Commander Shepard's sister? I had no idea..." he trailed off at the look that came over the woman's face.

"I get that a lot, you have _no idea,_" she waved a hand in dismissal before going on, "Barla Von tells me you're looking into this...forced organ donation."

"Yes...I worked on a case similar to this some years ago. A salarian geneticist by the name of Saleon was growing cloned organs inside the bodies of his own staff. He got away from me...for a time." Garrus leaned forward, the light shifting and reflecting from the optical interface over his left eye. "Commander Shepard helped me track him down."

"You think this is the same guy?" Bethany asked, wishing it could be that simple. Garrus shook his head.

"No. Saleon is dead. And this doesn't fit his established MO in any case. Drugging people and extracting the organs from them? No, he was a good deal more sophisticated."

Bethany rested her forearms on the table and leaned in towards the turian. If he felt threatened by her intrusion into his personal space, he made no sign of it. "So what _can_ you tell me?"

"I can get access to the logfiles created every time a public transit vehicle enters or exits one of the terminals. Whoever drugged you must have used a vehicle of some sort to carry you to where the surgery was conducted. We can narrow things down by looking at all the vehicles that left from outside Chora's around the time you entered."

"And if they used a private vehicle?"

"Even private vehicles are registered and will have left an electronic trail for us to follow. We can also question the staff at Chora's and the hotel you were found in for any leads."

"Yeah, I already thought of that. Don't expect much though. The people who hang around Chora's go there for two reasons, mostly: they want to see tits and ass and they want to get drunk. As for the hotel, it turned out to be the place that rents rooms by the hour, if you get my meaning. Cheapskates. Coulda sprung for the Hilton at least."

Garrus nodded. "I will begin by accessing the vehicle logs. What time did you enter Chora's?"

"I had a meet set up at 2145 hours and got there a half-hour early to scope things out beforehand." Bethany sighed to herself, "Our boy Charles Sinclair which is assuredly _not_ his real name bought me that drink about ten minutes after I arrived."

"Good. You can start questioning the staff and patrons of Chora's and the hotel staff. And Shepard?"

"Yeah?"

"I look forward to working with you."

Bethany raised an eyebrow as the turian extended a three-fingered hand to her. She accepted and shook it. "Out of interest, do turians use a handshake or is it just to show you're accepting of other cultures?"

"I'm sure you are aware that the handshake originated as a way to make sure two warriors weren't carrying concealed weapons sheathed under their sleeves. Originally the handshake was a forearm grasp. Yes, we evolved similar traditions."

"Alright, I'll contact you if I learn anything, Vakarian." The turian nodded and Bethany left Flux, glad to be away from the too-bright lights and too-loud music.

Not that Chora's was any better. In fact, it was worse. As Bethany entered the club, feeling her mild headache ratchet up a notch, a young human dancing girl took her by the forearm and tugged her in the direction of a private booth. "Come here, honey. I got something special...just for you," she crooned into Bethany's ear, breath tickling her face and neck.

Resisting the urge to slam the girl's drug-addled head into a wall, Bethany instead let herself be led into the booth. The girl pushed her firmly into the leather seat and quickly straddled her hips. Bethany reached up and gripped the girl's wrists. The girl tried to pull back, "No touchy-touchy, darling. Only looky-looky."

"I'm not here for a lapdance, _honey._" Releasing the girl, Bethany removed the sketch she'd made of the man from the bar. It was a pretty good likeness, she thought.

"You know this guy?" she asked and handed the sketch to the girl. The girl stood up and seated herself opposite Bethany, smoothing her scant outfit over her thighs.

"Baby, I _know_ lots of guys," the dancer said and giggled. "Name's Scandal by the way."

"Scan..dal?" Bethany shrugged. "I'm sure you're a very...popular young woman. But I need you to look at the drawing and try to recall if you've seen him in here before."

With a toss of her red-streaked black hair, Scandal said, "Yeah...I seen him a few times. Shifty looking bastard. You can tell from his eyes. Offered to buy me a drink last week but I was on the clock, said I was available at closing but by then he'd already left."

_Yeah probably with me, the sick frack_

Bethany took back the sketch and leaned forward, meeting Scandal's wide-eyed blue gaze. "Listen to me, Scandal. Don't ever accept a drink from this guy. Or anybody else for that matter."

Scandal frowned, a line appearing in her otherwise smooth forehead. "He do something to you, sweetheart?"

"You could say that, yeah."

"Oh babe," Scandal gasped and pat Bethany's arm. "Look, no matter what anybody says, it wasn't your fault."

"What? No! He didn't rape me, he drugged me and somebody took my kidney."

Scandal sat back in the booth, mouth going wide with shock. "Shut the fuck _up!"_ she breathed. "That is equal parts sick and wicked."

"Isn't it just?" Bethany removed a card from the thigh pocket of her armour and handed it to Scandal. The business card, black printing on white background read simply **Bethany Shepard, Mercenary** and listed her contact details. "Likely he won't be back but if you do see him, call me immediately."

"I'll pass the word around to the other girls and the barstaff and sweetie?"

"Yeah?"

"If he _does_ come back, I'll try my best to keep him...occupied. If you know what I mean." Scandal rose from her seat and performed a little sashaying move as she left the booth. Bethany watched the young woman go, shaking her head in bemusement. "What is it about me that attracts sex-crazed young girls?" she asked herself as she left the booth and, dodging patrons, made for the bar.

"Help ya?" the bartender grunted at her.

"Seen this guy?" Bethany enquired, holding up the sketch. The bartender glanced briefly at it and shrugged.

"Mighta. Then again, I might not'a. Who's to say my memory won't improve with some credits?" the bartender asked, rubbing the tips of his thumb and forefinger together.

Right then, with the pounding music and odd lighting and the suggestive leers constantly thrown at her, Bethany lost the grip on her rapidly wearing thin patience. Moving with the speed of a striking snake, she grabbed the startled bartender around the back of his head and slammed him face-first into the bar. The man's forehead impacted the bar with a satisfying thud. Bethany enjoyed it so much, she did it again.

All around her, conversations and drinking stopped as patrons and dancers alike stared at her. Bethany pulled the bartender's face up and dragged him halfway over the bar so he was almost nose to nose with her.

"I'm through asking politely," she spoke in a harsh whisper. "So start talking unless you want to find out if your head is as thick as it looks."

"OK! OK! Just lemme go, you crazy bitch!"

Bethany shoved him back over the bar and he reeled back a few steps before regaining his balance. "He comes in a couple times a week. Sometimes more. I don't know his name, OK? I'm tellin' you the truth."

"If you or any other staff see him in here, call me immediately." Bethany slapped another business card on the desk and walked out. As she left the club behind, she realised her headache had faded and smiled with real pleasure for the first time in days.


	3. Confessions of a Kidney Thief

**Chapter 3  
****Confessions of a Kidney Thief**

The following are excerpts from the journal of Karen O'Donohue.

**May Nine**

Today I confronted Simons and I said to him, I said, "Simons, I'm done with this! We agreed that I'd only help you until I could make enough money to reopen my clinic."

He just looked at me as though I were an interesting specimen under an electron microscope. "Let me tell you how things are," he said back to me, "You belong to me just as I belong to you. Do you really think I can trust you not to go to the authorities with this? No, I am afraid you're in this until _I_ say we're ready to stop and if you even think about turning me in, remember why you're here in the first place - you lost your clinic after a malpractice suit and we both know you got off lightly. So if I decide to keep harvesting organs from the poor sods the girls bring in...as well as the occasional woman, then that's what we'll _both_ be doing. Threaten me again, and I won't have to expose your past because I'll simply have you killed."

I went cold as ice when he said that, cuz here's the thing: I could tell he wasn't bluffing. It was in his eyes. They were so cold and flat it was like he was already dead inside. Then as though nothing had happened he began to scrub up for surgery and so did I. God help me but I had no choice.

The latest 'acquistion' was a woman...don't get a lot of the fairer sex in here. Most guys who go out trawling for women are miserable at it but Sinclair told me this one was easy. Apparently she's a merc and he presented himself as a client. I hope to God she doesn't come after us. A trained killer? And we just took her kidney? Anyway, she was older than most of the 'donors' we get in. ID says she's Bethany Shepard...nah, couldn't be any relation to Commander Shepard, that'd be too insane for words. Age thirty-five but she'd kept herself in extremely good shape, had a body to die for. Very firm breasts...God I wish I had breasts like that...bullet scar in her stomach, to the left of the navel. Aside from that, not a mark on her. The routine exam before the surgery revealed mild emphysema of the lungs. There were no cigarettes among her belongings; my guess is she's a recent convert to not smoking. Good girl. If she survives, her lungs should last her a good long time.

The procedure went flawlessly. The patient bled some but we got that under control quickly and pumped her full of enough antibiotics that the risk of post-op infection is minimal. Then we dumped her in the bathtub full of ice. That always cracks Simons up. Apparently, hundreds of years ago on Earth, there was this urban legend about exactly what we're doing only what we're doing is real.

Simons is insane, I've decided. Like I mentioned already, it's in his eyes.

**May Sixteen**

We lost another one today. God help me but Simons said the procedure is practically routine these days and that the 'patient' must have had a weak heart or reacted badly to the anaesthetics. The patient...his name was Abraham Toms and if Simons finds out I'm making these entries, well, mine will likely be the next kidneys to appear on a black market price list. Them and all my other internals.

At first, things went like clockwork. That asari slut Rihara went out to Flux dressed in little more than a few strategically placed strips of leather and with a studded leather dog collar around her throat and came back three hours later with Toms passed out in the rear seat of an automated transit car. Toms appeared healthy enough - about twenty-five years standard, six-two, hundred and eighty pounds, kept himself trim, you know? He was kinda cute...OK so I should stop talking about him like that because when I think of how he looked when he came in and the mess he was in when he went out...I gotta stop for a minute.

All right, I'm back. Went off on a little crying jag that turned into a laughing fit which turned _back _into a crying jag. I'm a mess. The procedure started smoothly enough, Toms' vitals were steady and Simons got the organ out without any dramas and it was immediately placed in cryo-suspension and sent to who knows where. I hope whoever ends up with the kidney appreciates it.

I was assisting Simons with the procedure, as usual and just as we were about to begin closing Toms up, his BP crashed and he began bleeding out all over the damn theatre. We tried to pump him full of the artificial stuff but it bled out faster than we could get it in. Then he flatlined.

And that cold bastard Simons, he just glanced at the guy and said, "Let's harvest the rest of his organs while he's still fresh."

Still fresh? Like he was talking about a cut of beef in the supermarket or something. And the absolute worst part? Simons looked at me after it was all over and said, calm as you like, "See that it gets to the incinerator." It, he called him. Incinerator. Like he was garbage and needed to be gotten rid of. God, I'm getting the shakes just thinking about it.

I can't go on like this. This was meant to be a temporary gig to tide me over until I got back on my feet but I'm at least partially responsible for killing a man. And who knows how many others died _after_ we closed them up and dumped them. I could be a mass murderer and not know it. Oh hell, I hear somebody coming.

**May Eigtheen**

Sinclair came into the lab today, smiling like the cat that got the cream. Rihara said to him, "What are _you _so happy about?" and lights up this cigarette. An asari who chain smokes like it's going out of fashion...of all the humanisms for her to adopt, she had to go for the filthiest ones. She said she 'likes to wrap her lips around something firm.' So of _course_ that pig Sinclair said back to her, "Babe, I got something firm you can wrap your lips around."

Where was I....right. Sinclair came in grinning like an idiot and said, "I just had an epiphany." I was stunned. I didn't think Sinclair could even _pronounce_ epiphany, much less know what it means.

Simons said to him in that smarmy voice of his, "Which would be what exactly?"

"Hookers," Sinclair said back to him. "Why risk going out to find people to bring back here when we can just call up an escort service and the hookers _come to us!"_

For a half-instant, that actually sounded like a good idea. Then Rihara, who's a great deal smarter than her sluttishness would suggest said, "Sinclair, you dope. What do think's going to happen when hookers start turning up missing their kidneys? They're going to know that the guy they went to service drugged and cut 'em open. Goddess you can be an idiot. Even for a human."

Simons didn't say anything at all. He just got this weird look in his eye, like a serial killer or something who's just by accident discovered a new and fun way to kill people. I really think he'd go for it. I have to find a way to get out of this place.

---

The night manager at the Claremont Hotel was a reed-thin guy with sandy coloured hair engaged in a tactical retreat from his forehead. He'd attempted to cover up the growing baldness with a comb-over which only made it look worse. As though to compensate for the follicle reduction in his scalp, he'd cultivated long sideburns and the kind of moustache that put Bethany in mind of male porn stars. Given the kind of hotel he managed, this was weirdly appropriate. The night manager wore a tan-coloured sport coat over an open-throated shirt revealing fishbelly-pale skin.

Bethany stood before the reception desk which was flanked on each side by a small potted palm tree that had seen better days. Bethany suspected the trees had seen better decades. The manager, whose name tag identified as Jerry looked Bethany up and down. And up and down as she strode across the faded burgundy carpet of the lobby.

"Heh," Jerry began. "You one'a them girls what does the dress-ups and fantasy stuff, huh?" he spoke in a surprisingly high-pitched voice. "What're you wearing under that soldier get-up? Edible panties?"

Controlling the urge to throttle him, Bethany instead smiled sweetly and replied, "Actually I'm a mercenary investigating a string of organ thefts. Your...establishment has been used as a dumping ground by the parties responsible. Let's chat, shall we?"

Jerry eyes widened and his voice rose both in volume and pitch until Bethany's skull was almost vibrating. "My hotel is _not_ a dump! And whatever consenting adults do to and with one another behind closed doors ain't none o' my business!"

"Listen to me, you ingrate and listen well. I was drugged, operated on and relieved of my left kidney and when I woke up, I was in the bathroom of room 1313 of this hotel and let me tell you, _Jerry,_" Bethany leaned forward and stared deep into the man's pale brown eyes, "There wasn't a thing consensual about it. Now, seeing as how I didn't get here under my own power, somebody must have dragged me here and I'd like to know if you know anything about that."

Bethany stood back waiting expectantly.

"I...uh don't know nothin' 'bout that.." Jerry trailed off and refused to make eye contact. Or even boob contact and Bethany knew he was lying. "Uh huh. I'm going to ask you this just once: may I see the records of who rented room 1313 in the last few months?"

"No! Absolutely not! The privacy of my guests is of paramount concern!"

"Fine, we do it the hard way." Turning away from the desk, Bethany placed a hand to her ear and keyed into the frequency Garrus had given her.

"Vakarian," he answered.

"Garrus, Bethany. I'm at the Claremont Hotel and I require some assistance in gaining access to their reservations database."

From behind her Jerry shouted, "You can't do that, those are private files!"

Turning half around Bethany said conversationally, "Shut up before I sever your vocal chords." To Garrus she said, "It's a slim lead but there might some electronic trail left by whoever paid for the room I was found in...how are you tracing funds through dummy corporations?"

"I've followed my share of dirty money in my time, Bethany. I'll be there in ten. And Shepard?"

"Yeah?"

"Try to avoid killing any potential information sources before I get there."

Bethany smirked and replied, "What about after?" but Garrus had already clicked off.

True to his word, Garrus arrived ten minutes later, cutting an impressive figure in his grey and black hardsuit. Joining Bethany at the counter, he said to the manager, "Garrus Vakarian. I'm an independent investigator working on a case involving the theft of bodily organs here on the Citadel. We require access to your reservations system."

Jerry wiped sweat from his forehead with a folded white handkerchief and said, "No! You need a warrant for that! I know my rights!"

Bethany traded glances with Garrus. The latter's mandibles twitched fractionally. Bethany unclipped the shotgun from the hardpoint at the base of her spine and disengaged the safety. The quiet whir as the weapon unfolded itself was audible even over Jerry's high-pitched scream. "Here's my warrant," Bethany deadpanned. "Now, are you gong to let us see the files or am I gonna have to redecorate the walls with your viscera?" To emphasise the threat the shotgun posed, Bethany pumped the slide and Jerry jerked as though he'd been shot.

"OK! OK! Take whatever you want! Please!"

Interrupting the tense tableau was a tall well-dressed gentleman of middle years entering the lobby via the front doors, a young lady of the night on each arm. The girl on the left was blonde and slender with the faraway look of the sand addict in her eyes. The girl on the right was shorter and curvier with dark red hair cascading over her bare shoulders. She too bore the countenance of a woman currently tripping the light fantastic. Both girls tottered unsteadily on stiletto heels.

Bethany glanced at the trio and said, "Don't mind us, gentleman and ladies. We're just having a civilised chat with Jerry here. Isn't that right, Jerry?"

Jerry nodded dumbly as the three paused midway between front door and elevator bank. "Is my usual room ready, Jerry?" the man asked as though he was used to seeing people threatened by shotgun packing women. Again, Jerry just nodded. "Good man!" the well-dressed man replied before giving each of his playmates a squeeze on the rear. "Come on, girls."

Garrus waited until the three newcomers had left via the elevator before stepping around to Jerry's side of the counter. Jerry himself meanwhile, had slumped into a swivel chair and was staring into space.

"Let's see here..." Garrus muttered to himself as he used his omni-tool to breach the password protection and soon found the records of past reservations. The vast majority of the rooms had been booked for one hour periods and paid in hard currency using a variety of false names ranging from I.P. Freely to Seymour Butts and Homer Sexual.

Room 1313 however, had been paid for in advance using a currency transfer the day before Bethany's awakening in the bathtub. The name of the account used to transmit the funds was nothing more than an alphanumeric string. Garrus copied the information to an OSD.

"Find anything?" Bethany asked. She'd poured the contents of a cold mug of coffee into the more thirsty-looking of the two palms. "You oughta take better care of your plants, Jerry."

Jerry just nodded wordlessly.

"The room you were found in was paid for via a direct deposit. The account code doesn't match any used by Citadel banking institutions. It will take some time to track this."

Bethany nodded. "Can you get access to the security camera feeds from the last week? Maybe whoever carried me was caught on tape."

"Unlikely but I'll take a look just the same." Again Garrus quickly disabled the security protocols and isolated footage from around the time Bethany awoke in room 1313.

"Nothing from the main entrance, which is to be expected. I'll check the camera from the service entrances and loading docks...here's something."

Bethany went around the desk, feeling her heart beat faster. Could she be about to get a glimpse of the people who'd done this to her?

On screen was a grainy still image taken from the security feed from the loading dock. Garrus touched a control on his omni-tool and the feed began to play. A vehicle, a civilian air-car settled to the ground and Bethany and Garrus watched in silence as the rear doors opened. A pair of humanoid figures exited the vehicle, one from the driver's side, the other from the rear and carried between them a third form, limp and unresponsive.

As the trio drew closer to the door of the loading bay - and the camera - they became sharper and more defined. The two figures carrying the third appeared to be male and human but due to the poor quality of the recording, it was almost impossible to pick out individual details. Both wore dark clothes and jackets with hoods pulled up over their heads. The figure carried between them appeared female but, again, it was difficult to get details. The figure's head slumped forward, hair spilling down towards the ground.

Bethany reached out and paused the feed. "Look familiar?" she asked Garrus and pulled her hair free of its pony tail, shaking it out until it fell to her shoulders. She hung her head down and let the hair spill over her face.

"It wouldn't stand up in court but the figure in that footage _does_ bear a resemblance to you."

Bethany straightened up and pulled her hair back into place. Facing the monitor again, she felt a curious mix of anger and violation. Most likely the woman on the screen was herself, shortly after enduring major surgery and being dragged by the armpits into an anonymous hotel to be dumped in a tub of ice.

Voice calm and controlled, giving no hint of the fury she felt building within her, she said to Garrus, "Take a copy of that and let's get out of here. I want to find these people, Garrus."

As Garrus nodded and ejected the OSD from the computer's drive, she whispered, "I want to find them and kill them."

**A/N:** Thanks to my reviewers for taking the time to review the first couple of chapters. I'm not too great at this 'detective' stuff and if it seems like things are falling into place too neatly, I watch too many TV cop shows. It's the TV cop shows, I swear! Damn _Life_ and _Castle._ Damn them! On a side note, catch _Castle_ if you get a chance. Nathan Fillion from _Firefly_'s in it and damn, he's funny.


	4. The Honeypot

**Chapter Four  
****The Honeypot**

Scandal was about twenty minutes away from clocking off for the night and, as far as the young woman was concerned, shift's end couldn't come quickly enough. It was supposed to be her night off and she'd made plans for the evening but Joanie had called in sick and the boss had asked her to handle Joanie's shift. Scandal had been most displeased and the leers and crude comments she'd endured as she performed dances and served drinks only deepened her disgust with the human race in general and men in particular.

If her parents could see her now, they'd be horrified. Scandal smiled, a little sadly. Father still believed she was studying medicine and she was, kinda but the dancing gig she'd taken up to cover her tuition and keep a roof over her head had spiralled a little out of her control. The girl whose birth certificate named as Jennifer had found that she rather enjoyed the power she had over men simply by wearing revealing attire and dancing. Of course, the better she was at dancing the worse the men's behaviour became. But that's what bouncers were for.

Scandal had been dancing at Chora's a little more than a month when the man for whom she was performing attempted to pull her into his lap. As though from the shadows appeared the krogan door guard. That had been the first time Scandal had ever seen one of the krogan from such close proximity, as he ejected the unruly patron, the sheer grace and power of his movements, the rippling of muscles beneath the thick hide excited her in a way no human man had ever done before.

The feeling of excitement grew as the night went on and, by the time Chora's doors closed, Scandal had been in the grip of a barely restrained sexual energy she'd never felt before. And all from watching a krogan flex his muscles. God...who'd have thought she of all people, such a nice girl, really, could be turned on to such an extent? Certainly Scandal herself hadn't known.

Scandal was rather enjoying the pleasant sensations the memories were arousing in her when she saw the Man enter the club. She'd committed the pencil drawing of the Man to memory and remembered what the older woman had told her. What he'd done to her. "Son of a whore..." she muttered and quickly made for the bar.

She poured a large measure of liquor into a glass and leaned across the bar towards the barkeep, giving him a good long look at her cleavage. "Hey, there, honey," she crooned.  
"What is it, Scandal?" he replied, voice brusque but his gaze didn't pull away from her chest.

"Got any of those little red pills?" she asked, lowering her voice.

Now the bartender's eyes snapped up to meet hers. "Jesus Christ, woman! You trying to get me fired?"

"Come on, darlin' I know you're holding out on me...just one pill. I know somebody who'd like to take a trip," and Scandal giggled at the thought of the Man wide eyed and gazing raptly at his surroundings while Bethany interrogated him.

"Just this once, Scandal? OK? I'm serious. Look at me, girl."

Scandal thought it was hugely ironical that a man who until then had been staring down her top was telling _her_ to look at him. She only nodded soberly and looked him in the eyes. "If anything bad happens, if somebody has a bad trip, I don't know you, alright?" he insisted.

"No problem, honey," she said and pat him gently on the cheek. He quickly removed a tiny plastic bag with a single red tablet within and handed it to her. Scandal winked at him and secreted the bag inside her top.

Making sure she wasn't being observed, she removed the tablet, crushed it against the bar under the heel of her hand and swept the dust into the glass of liquor. A few stirs with a swizzle stick dissolved the drug into the alcohol. Scanning the crowd, Scandal found the Man chatting to a couple of young women and quickly pushed herself between them.

"Hey! Outta my way, bitch!" one of them yelled.

Scandal ignored them and instead turned the full force of her not inconsiderable charms on the Man. "Hey there, handsome. Want to have a drink with me and...get acquainted?"

The Man looked from Scandal to the pair of women who had melted back into the crowd and smiled. Tonight was his lucky night and maybe he could have a little fun before he delivered this little gift to Simons. Offering the girl his hand he spoke using his most debonair voice, "My name is Charles Sinclair and what name does such a delightful young lady such as yourself go by?"

Smiling triumphantly, Scandal took Sinclair by the hand and tugged him towards a darkened booth. "Honey, you can call me whatever you like. I'm going to give you a night you won't ever forget. I promise."

---

Bethany, Garrus, Shepard and Williams sat in a circle around the table in the small kitchenette of Bethany's Ward Three apartment to discuss their findings. Bethany's pet rottweiler, Mister Darcy, excited by so many new people and scents went from chair to chair sniffing the the newcomers and attempting to jump into their laps. Idly scratching the dog between his ears, Bethany asked, "So what have we got so far?"

"Precious little, I'm afraid," her brother replied. "Besides the room booking and the video footage which could be of anybody carrying anyone, there's not much to go on."

Garrus leaned forward in his seat. "I've had little success following the back trail of the funds used to pay for the hotel room."

"What about privately owned med centres? The surgery had to be carried out somewhere with the proper equipment," Williams suggested.

Bethany was about to answer when her comm unit bleeped. "Excuse me," she said as she accepted the call.

"Shepard." In the background she heard the familiar beat of Chora's dance music.

"Is this Beth the Mercenary?" a young woman's voice replied, speaking loudly to be heard over the music.

"It is indeed Beth the Mercenary. Who's this?" Bethany enquired though she had a fairly good idea.

"It's Scandal. From Chora's? You asked me to call if that guy showed up. You know, the _guy?_"

The fingers of Bethany's left hand paused in their scratching between Mister Darcy's ears. "He's there? Right now?" The edge in her voice caused her companions, human, turian and canine to look up at her.

"Yeah," Scandal confirmed.

"Great! Scandal, listen to me, don't go near him just keep an eye on him and-"

"Too late," the younger woman said cheerfully. "I already gave him a spiked drink, ironic, isn't it? By the time I finished my first dance for him, he was already drugged to the eyeballs. Stupid bastard's trying to hit on one of the pole dancing poles."

A small smile curved Bethany's lips and she laughed throatily. "Atta girl. We'll be there in ten. And Scandal?"

"Yeah?"

"I owe you one."

Bethany ended the call and nodded to Garrus. "We're up. Bring your interrogation kit."

Garrus' mandibles twitched momentarily in confusion before he answered, "I don't _have_ an interrogation kit."

Bethany seemed to deflate slightly. "No electrodes to attach to his genitals?"

"No." Garrus confirmed. Williams and Shepard traded glances.

"Beth," Shepard began and rose from the table. Williams also stood. "Let us come with you. I'm worried for you, sis. You're so full of anger..."

Bethany smirked. "Is this the part where you tell me to let go of my anger before it consumes me? Because I've already seen that film and I'm not turning into Darth Vader."

Again Shepard and Williams exchanged glances. "Darth who?"

Embracing her brother tightly, Bethany spoke softly into his ear, "I'll be fine. I appreciate your concern but this is something I have to do for myself and by myself."

As she released him and stepped away, Shepard frowned then nodded. "OK but I'll be on standby in case you need me."

Bethany and Garrus headed for the apartment's exit; Williams said, "Give 'em hell, Beth."

"Don't encourage her," Shepard replied.

---

"Wow, if ever I needed an object lesson on why you don't mix party drugs with hard liquor, this guy is it," Bethany murmured as she, Garrus and Scandal, now wearing jeans and a pink cashmere sweater stood around Charles Sinclair. The man of the moment was slumped in a chair in the back office area of Chora's. Garrus recognised the place as where Fist had made his last stand. That wall there had been the final resting place of most of Fist's intestines after Wrex had shot the gangster point-blank with a shotgun. Garrus hadn't imagined that pureed human vital organs could emit such a foul odour.

"What'd you give him, anyway?" Bethany asked as she leaned over the man and peeled back his right eyelid, revealing an eye that was mostly bloodshot.

"Hell if I know what's in it," Scandal shrugged. "I got this red pill off...this guy."

"Whatever it was, we'll have to wait for him to sober up before we can question him," Garrus put in.

"Oh, I can sober him up right quick," Bethany assured the others before backhanding Sinclair with all the force she could muster. The man's head whipped to the right; the force of the impact sending him half out of the seat. He didn't so much as a bat an eyelid, however.

"Huh," she replied, flexing her hand. "He's _really_ out of it."

Scandal bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, "Ohh, can I hit him? Huh, can I?" Bethany smiled at the younger woman; she sounded like a child asking to ride the rollercoaster at the fair. "Garrus?" she asked the turian.

"Oh let her have a go. She's already committed a felony by being in possession of an illegal narcotic, not that I'll arrest her over it."

Grinning hugely, face lit with the glow of a child up to no good and confident of getting away with it, Scandal slapped their captive across the face, relishing the sharp smacking sound of palm on face. Sinclair's head rocked in the opposite direction and spit flew from his lips. He uttered a low moan. A red handprint burned like a brand in the side of his face.

Garrus and Bethany settled in to wait for Sinclair to wake up. Scandal frowned at her watch. "I wish I could hang around but I have to go home and feed the cats. They'll be going ape by now." Bethany nodded her thanks and as Scandal left, Garrus locked down the office door.

As the turian turned back to face Bethany, he saw a faraway look in her green eyes and saw for the first time, the dark circles beneath them and the pallor of her skin. Though she'd never admit it, the events of the last week had taken a toll. She'd undergone major surgery and by rights should still be recovering. Instead she'd chosen to commit herself to this course of action no matter what. It was an ethic similar to that seen in the turian military, Garrus reflected. Bethany would have made a good turian, he decided.

"What are you planning to do to him?" the turian quietly asked of the human. She looked up at him, startled out of whatever reverie she'd been in. Garrus was sure that when she rubbed a hand across the armour over her lower back, she wasn't aware of doing it.

Bethany smiled sadly. "Part of me want's to open him up and see how long he can go before he bleeds to death. But that would be counter-productive." She paused to survey the room, "And messy." To herself she muttered, "I'm getting too old for this. You know, most of the girls I went to school with are in stable careers with husbands, kids, the whole thing. Me? I live day to day not knowing what's around the corner...with a dog. True, I chose this but if I had known it would turn out like _this,"_ she gestured at drugged man slumped in the seat, "I might have thought twice, you know?"

Garrus considered this for a moment, "I used to feel the same about leaving C-Sec to join Commander Shepard but I see now that I made the right decision at the right time. In time perhaps you'll see that as well."

Bethany smiled a happier smile and Garrus was glad of it, "Anybody ever tell you that you're a very wise man...turian?"

"Not until now. Thank you."

Before either of them could say anything more, their guest uttered a pained moan and leaned forward, almost falling out of the chair and onto the carpet.

"Well well, Sleeping Beauty's finally awake!" Bethany crowed and clapped her hands together. "How you doing, sport?"

Sinclair groaned again and straightened up, eyes going wide as he looked from human to turian. Then his gaze flickered to the closed door. Garrus saw the movement and said, "Forget about it, human. Door's locked. We have some questions to ask you."

"You...I know you," Sinclair's voice was a harsh whisper.

"Didn't think you'd see me again, did you? Especially not in these circumstances," Bethany said and leaned forward, hands gripping the sides of Sinclair's face, forcing him to look up at her. "I'm very upset with you. Start talking: who do you work for and where are they?"

Sinclair attempted to shake his head. "I can't...I'll be killed. They'll cut me open and sell my organs on the black market!"

Bethany released him with a sigh. Whatever measure of relief Sinclair felt at this development was short lived. Bethany took the man's right hand in both of hers and with a vicious jerk, snapped the index finger at the second knuckle. Sinclair shrieked. Bethany looked over at Garrus. "This room sound-proofed, I wonder?"

"I doubt the patrons will be able to hear anything over the dance music in any case."

"Good enough for me," Bethany said and turned back to Sinclair. White-faced with pain and fear, he'd retreated back into himself, cradling the broken hand to his chest. Bethany tapped him in the forehead, hard and he looked up at her, eyes wide. "There are two hundred and six bones in the human body," Bethany began, channelling Sarah Connor. "That was _one_."

"I advise you to start talking," Garrus put in from his place near the door.

"Please! I don't wanna die!"

"Yeah? Well _I _didn't want to lose a kidney! So I guess neither of us got what we wanted." Ignoring his cries of protest, Bethany grabbed Sinclair's other hand, lightly running a fingertip along the back of it.

"OK! OK! I'll talk!" Sinclair shrieked.

"Pity, I was looking forward to torturing you some more," Bethany sighed. "Oh well. Who do you work for?"

"His name's Simons! Nobody knows his first name...hell that could _be_ his first name!"

"Ring any bells?" Bethany asked Garrus. The turian activated his omni-tool and, bathed in the device's amber glow, he linked into C-Sec's database utilising a backdoor program he'd devised. "There's an entry here for a Gerrard Simons...surgeon, struck off after he was caught removing organs from corpses and selling them on the black market."

"Charming fellow," Bethany replied. Turning to Sinclair, she asked, "Question two: where is Simons?"

His will to resist broken, Sinclair explained, "He maintains a clinic in the Wards, all the funds are paid through shell companies. It's a legitimate business by day, quite profitable as well....by night, well. You know how things are. For what it's worth...I'm sorry you went through that."

"No," Bethany answered, voice low and murderous. Leaning into Sinclair until they were nose to nose, she went on, "You're just sorry you got caught." Pulling away from the man, she asked, "Where do we find the clinic?"

Sinclair sighed and told them everything.

---

The following are excerpts from the journal of Karen O'Donohue

**May 23**

That creep Sinclair's missing. Things are unravelling, falling apart. _I'm _falling apart. I woke up screaming in the middle of the night...saw Toms' face floating before me, he was begging for me to find his lost organs and put them back in, said he felt hollowed out. Rihara yelled at me to shut the fuck up. That whore, she came back with _two _warm bodies last night. A guy and a girl. She giggled when she told us how she'd gotten them: said she was into threesomes and they practically fell over themselves when she offered them drinks. Idiots. What is it with us humans and asari anyway? It's like an asari looks in our direction and our brains turn to mush. Men, I can understand, they think with their penises all the time so it wouldn't be hard but women...I like to think us girls are above that kind of thing. Of course the kinds of girls who frequent Chora's are sluts to begin with, mostly so no big surprise, I guess.

Anyway, Rihara brings in these two idiots, kids, really, no older than eighteen and Simons looked about as happy as I've ever seen him. And seeing him happy is frightening. Needless to say, we operated on them both and sent them on their way...as far as I know, they're both still alive. I...need to take a break...talk more later.

**May 25**

Sinclair's still missing. Simons is convinced he's gone to C-Sec and turned state's evidence and now he, Simons, that is, is in the process of packing up our gear, getting ready to head off station. I'm glad. At least no more people will be hurt because of us. I just wish there was a way to warn the authorities....Hmmm. If they catch me, they'll kill me but it's the only chance I'll have.

---

Working the front desk at C-Sec HQ meant that Officer Joe Lonsdale saw a wide variety of people during his shift - humans, turians, asari even the occasional quarian. Despite their inherent differences, all shared a common similarity - they all claimed to be innocent. _Yeah and Elvis is still alive and flipping burgers in the Wards _Lonsdale thought as he struggled not to yawn. It had been a slow shift, so far. Aside from the screaming drunk woman hauled in for drunk and disorderly by a patrol in the Wards, there'd been nothing remarkable.

Making sure nobody in the vicinity was looking in his direction, Lonsdale logged onto that asari fetish site on the 'net he'd stumbled across the other day. _Kinky_, he thought to himself as he clicked through a gallery of youthful-looking nubile asari in a variety of provocative poses. _And they like to think they're so high and mighty._

The communications console set into the front desk lit up with an incoming call and Lonsdale hurriedly killed the browser, purging the cache as he took the incoming call.

"Citadel Security, how may I direct your call?" he answered.

At first there was nothing from the other end but rapid breathing and Lonsdale had time to think,_ Another crank _before a young woman's voice whispered into his ear. Lonsdale's brow furrowed in concentration as he tried to hear the woman's voice over the background noise of the station.

"Listen," she began, "I have information regarding the....organ donations that've been happening."

"May I have your name, Ma'am?" Lonsdale asked, ready to input the details into his system.

The woman laughed softly in his ear, "Nuh-uh. I'm risking my own life just making this call. I want to speak to whoever's in charge of the investigation. _And_ I want to be put into witness protection."

Lonsdale sighed, rubbed a hand along his jaw. Five o'clock shadow rasped beneath his skin. Word was that Chellick and Hardcastle were stumped for leads so maybe he should just put the call through?

Sighing again, Lonsdale keyed his comm.

"Chellick," the flanged voice answered.

"Detective, I have a woman on the line, claims to have information on the black market organ trade."

When Chellick replied, his voice was alive with excitement, "Lonsdale, put her through immediately!"

"Sir," Lonsdale said and transferred the call.

---

Karen sat at a public comm terminal just off the lower Wards markets. She was hiding in plain sight from Simons. All around her were people of all races, going about their business. Nobody so much as spared her a glance. The background noise, composed of many voices speaking at once soothed her jangled nerves. She was _so_ close to lifting the lid on the whole thing. All she needed was to be safely within C-Sec protective custody and then...

"Karen, Karen, Karen," the voice spoke from directly behind her. Karen spun around in the chair, eyes widening in fear as she looked up at Simons' face. His eyes, cold, flat and lifeless seemed to bore into hers. Her lips quivered and a single tear slid from one eye. Behind her a voice issued from the speaker in the comm terminal. Without breaking eye contact, Simons reached around her and cut the connection.

"Simons...I..it's not what you think!" she babbled, eyes darting left and right, seeking an escape. There was none. Simons was a large man and he effectively blocked her exit with his sheer bulk. Worse, Karen now saw, was Rihara hovering over his shoulder, smiling maliciously. She raised her right hand and Karen saw with an utter lack of surprise the syringe held between her slender fingers. Rihara's thumb rested on the plunger and the stainless steel needle glittered in the overhead lights.

"Come along quietly, dear," Simons said, voice surprisingly gentle. "I promise you that you won't feel anything."

Instinctively, Karen recoiled from the needle and her mouth fell open to scream. Simons lunged forward, clamping a firm hand over her mouth, muffling her cries. Though she struggled, Karen couldn't escape from her seat. Rihara stepped up beside Simons and in one smooth movement, plunged the needle into the vein in the human's throat. An instant later she fell limp as the fluid within in the syringe did its job.

Simons and Rihara hauled the unconscious woman from the comm booth and into a nearby automated transit car.

Nobody saw anything.

---

Garrus observed as Bethany readied herself for combat. The human checked the action of each of her weapons before slamming a fresh block of ballistic compound into the receiver and cycling a round. Scrawled in hot pink highlighter across the breastplate of her armour was _Ask not for whom the bell tolls for it tolls for thee_.

Garrus' keen gaze took in the rest of the scrawlings on Bethany's armour, _Guns don't kill people, I do_ and _Can't we all just get along?_ among them.

The turian's mandibles clicked in amusement. This Bethany Amber-Louise was a complex woman, he decided. That or she was simply deranged. It was hard for him to tell. Garrus thought about the concern Shepard had for his sister and decided it would be prudent to at least attempt to curb the woman's zealousness.

"Bethany?" he began. She paused as she slot a concussion grenade into the under-barrel launcher of her rifle.

"Perhaps we _should_ allow the Commander to accompany us when we investigate the clinic."

Bethany laughed sourly. "Investigate?" she spoke as though she were tasting the word. "I kinda had a _recon in force _dealie in mind. With emphasis on the force."

"We don't know what defences they have in place. And now that one of their men is missing, they have to know something is amiss," Garrus pointed out. "We'll stand a better chance if we bring Shepard and Williams along."

Bethany sighed as she slid the rifle home into the hardpoint on the back of her suit. "Fine...I suppose you'll be wanting to place them all under arrest as well?"

"Yes. I think I understand your concerns, Bethany," Garrus began. "When the Commander and I finally located Dr Saleon, I was more than ready to pull the trigger on him and finish things."

"I assume something happened to make you change your mind?" Bethany asked, eyebrow raised.

Garrus nodded. "Your brother told me something that resonates within me still, _You can't control what people will do. You can only control how you'll react_. He also pointed out that if we arrested Saleon, we could learn how he was doing what he was doing and stop it entirely."

"So what happened?"

"Saleon tried to run and we shot him," Garrus shrugged.

"So he died in the end anyway?" Bethany chuckled. "That must have made Augie's day. All right, fine. We'll bring him along and see about arresting these guys."


	5. Scrubbing Up

**Chapter 5  
****Scrubbing Up**

Shepard looked from Garrus to Bethany and back again. He felt slightly amazed that Garrus had managed to talk some sense into his sister. "I'm glad you've calmed down a bit, sis," he said.

Bethany laughed. "Calm?" She shook her head. "I'd need a whole pharmacy worth of happy pills before I'll feel calm."

Shepard looked at his sister, saw the look in her eye, the tense stance of her body, the clenched fists. "Come here," he said, holding out his right hand. She stood there, eyebrow raised. "Come on," he said and waved her over. As his sister crossed over to him, Shepard opened his arms and pulled her close. Bethany stiffened inside the circle of his arms then surrendered to the comfort they offered. Slowly she felt herself relax.

Bethany rested her head on her brother's shoulder and muttered, "Why do things have to be _so hard?_ My whole life, I've screwed things up."

"Shhh," Shepard said and stroked her hair. "You're not a screw up."

Bethany laughed against the back of his head, "I've been fired from or quit every job I ever had. Then I finally find the one thing I'm actually good at..."

"Being a gun for hire?" Shepard replied doubtfully.

Bethany pulled back from her brother to look him in the eyes and nodded. "Yes, dear, being a hired gun. I'm just like you, in a way. People want me to clean up the messes they don't want to handle themselves."

Stepping away from her brother, Bethany went on, "On the upside, at least I don't have random Joe Six-Packs hitting me up for help wherever I go."

Garrus nodded in rueful agreement. How many times during the geth war and hunt for Saren had Shepard been diverted from his investigation by some mundane problem or other? Defusing a simmering feud between volus and salarian scientists over who got the data from the keeper scans that Shepard had _also_ been talked into assisting with for example

Bethany waved Shepard and Williams over to the couch while she perched atop one of the chairs around the kitchen table. "So, would I be safe in assuming you have a plan?" she asked and began winding strands of dark red hair around her index finger.

Shepard nodded. "I do."

Williams took up the explanation, leaning forward on the couch, "We know they're operating out of a clinic here in the Wards. We _also _know that we can't just go in shooting," Williams paused, eyeing Bethany's hardsuit and the small arsenal clipped to it. Bethany rolled her eyes. "So we should go in undercover."

Bethany stopped coiling the hair around her finger, raised an eyebrow. "Undercover how?"

Shepard answered. "We go in as patients, gain access to the surgical area...hopefully catch Simons and his people by surprise. Williams," he turned to his partner and turned to face him. "You'll go in posing as a patient."

"Why her?" Bethany asked.

Shepard patiently explained, "I'm too well known and they'd recognise you so it has to be Ash." Williams nodded agreement.

Bethany removed the combat talon from its sheathe on her left forearm and began using the tip of the blade to tease out minute grease particles from beneath her fingernails. "Let me get this straight," she said, not looking up from her nails. "You want to send a perfectly healthy woman into a med clinic and have her pose as a patient? Yeah, _that'll_ work."

Shepard crossed his arms over his chest and threw out a challenge. "You have a better idea, sis?"

"Actually I do,_ bro._" Bethany slid the blade home and looked up at Williams, "Ash, how are you at acting brain-damaged?"

"What?" Williams asked.

"Like this," Bethany said and sat in her seat, shoulders slumped, head tipped to one side, chin on chest and adopted a truly scary faraway look. After several seconds a runner of drool descended from her lower lip and pooled on the ceramic of her armour. Straightening up, she wiped her mouth. "Put her in a wheelchair, have her imitate a drooling zombie - nobody'll want to look twice at her, or even once. Garrus here can act as her nurse, and push her right past everybody. That way you get _two_ people inside."

Shepard nodded. "Interesting idea. You and I can sneak in the rear entrance - I'll pull up floor plans beforehand so we all know where we'll meet up then..."

A smile slowly blossomed on Bethany's face, "Then they'll learn why you don't ever cross the Shepards."

---

The four of them stood outside the sliding doors that led to the clinic run by Dr Chloe Michel. "You sure she'll let us have a wheelchair?" Bethany asked as Shepard palmed open the door.

Williams answered, "Well considering we saved her from Fist's thugs _and_ took out the blackmailer who was threatening, I think she'd be more than happy to help."

"Always helps to have few people owing you favours, I guess," Bethany shrugged.

"I didn't do it so I could use it to get a favour from her later!" Shepard snapped as they entered the clinic.

"Riiiight, you helped her out of the goodness of your heart..." Bethany trailed off as she saw the doctor emerge from behind a curtained off area with a patient. "...and apparently also because she's quite fetching."

"I helped her because she needed help. You might want to try it some time, Beth. You could do with a dose of the warm and fuzzies."

"Uh huh. Warm and fuzzy feelings don't pay the bills, Augie," Bethany replied.

As Dr Michel's patient walked towards them, heading for the exit, Williams cringed and even Shepard muttered, "Oh dear God no!"

"Who is it?" Bethany whispered to Garrus as the tall, blonde haired man stopped alongside Shepard, a beaming smile on his face.

"Oh my! Commander Shepard, what an _honour_ it is to see you again!"

"Hello, Conrad," Shepard said evenly, jaw muscles bunching together.

"I was just seeing the doctor for a refill of my medication and now I'm standing here with the most famous human in the station," Conrad gushed effusively.

_"Medication?" _Bethany whispered to Garrus whose mandibles were quivering in mirth.

"Trust me," he said quietly back. "You really don't want to know. Just stay absolutely still and don't get his attention."

But it was already too late. Conrad Verner's eager gaze passed over Shepard and Williams _and _Garrus before settling on Bethany. "Oh, and who is this saintly person?"

Before Bethany could answer, Williams spoke up, "That's a business associate, Conrad. She never speaks...at least not in words. You see those big guns she's carrying? Yeah, _they_ speak for her and she has a _really_ short fuse so it might be best to just leave her be."

A concerned look crossed Conrad's face and a brief struggle was visible in his facial features as he weighed up the pros and cons of continuing to hassle the tall, gorgeous redhead...who was apparently also batshit crazy. After several seconds, sanity won out, and making his farewells, Conrad quickly left. Shepard sighed with relief.

"Thank God, Ash...nice improvisation by the way."

"Yeah," Bethany deadpanned, "I _so_ love being characterised as the crazy trigger-happy chick."

Williams shrugged, "If the shoe fits..."

Dr Michel arrived before anybody could reply. "Commander Shepard," she began, her French accent dancing musically in their ears. "What can I do for you today?"

Bethany smirked, and, before he could speak, said, "He needs a refill of his little blue pills, doc," she nudged Williams, "You know the ones...he just can't keep up with his girlfriend here."

Dr Michel's eyes widened before she schooled her expression into one of detached politeness. "Of course, Commander, right this way."

Williams sniggered as Shepard's face turned an unhealthy shade of purple. "Actually, doctor, we're here to procure a wheelchair, if possible," he managed to get out, glaring at his sister who merely smiled beatifically. Garrus watched the sibling rivalry with amusement.

"Oh?" Dr Michel asked.

"It's for an undercover operation," Shepard explained, his colour returning to normal.

"I really don't want to know the details, do I?" the doctor guessed and received four nods in return. "I'll be back in a moment," she said and disappeared into a side storeroom.

When she returned a few minutes later, she was pushing a collapsible wheelchair before her. She spun the chair around so that the handles set alongside the chair back were towards Shepard's hands. He nodded appreciatively, "This should work perfectly. Thanks a lot, Doctor. I'll bring it back as soon as we're finished with it."

Dr Michel nodded. "Of course. Take as much time as you need. Now, is there anything else I can help you with?"

Shepard started to say no but Bethany quickly cut in, "He's shy about it, but he _really_ needs those pills..."

---

Back at Bethany's Wards apartment, Williams and Bethany retreated to Bethany's bedroom where Bethany helped Williams remove her hardsuit and loaned her some street clothes to wear. They returned to the main room a short time later, Williams now wearing an old pair of jeans, sandals and a T-shirt bearing a picture of a dolphin and the words **The Other Other White Meat**.

"Classy," Shepard remarked as Williams sat in the wheelchair and adopted the slumped postured Bethany had demonstrated earlier.

"Let you mouth drop open a little....good," Bethany said and stepped back to observe the effect. A thin strand of saliva connected Williams' collar bone to her mouth.

"Just so you know," Williams muttered into her chest, "If I ever ended up like this for real, I'd really appreciate being shot in the head."

Shepard nodded sombrely. "We need a blanket to cover her with so she can conceal a pistol."

Bethany nodded and picked up a thin ragged blanket from the floor. Shepard shook his head, "One that _doesn't_ smell like dog."

"You don't ask for much, do you?" Bethany said and retrieved a blanket from the bedroom. This she tucked around Williams' body. "Perfect."

---

As expected, people were at great pains not to look at the woman slumped in the wheelchair as she was pushed along by a tall turian dressed in civilian clothes. Garrus' eyepiece was concealed in a pants pocket. _It's like she's not even there_, Garrus mused to himself as he pushed the chair through the open sliding doors of the Lady of Mercy clinic just off one of the main transit hubs. Foot traffic was fairly heavy as people entered and exited the hub but they all gave the chair and its occupant a wide berth, as though afraid of contracting whatever had reduced the woman to the state they saw her in.

"That's right," Garrus said under his breath as they entered the stark white interior of the clinic. "Just bury your heads in the sand and pretend she's not even alive."

The clinic was a large facsimile of Dr Michel's office: cold and uninviting. _This isn't a place you go to get better,_ Williams thought as she observed the staff ministering to patients. _This is a place you come to die._ Gripped in one hand beneath the concealing blanket was her sidearm. Williams' right index finger rested outside the trigger guard and the familiar weight of the weapon was comforting. Her neck began to ache from the unnatural position her head was in and she longed to be able to stand upright and stretch. That would have to wait though.

Looking neither left nor right, Garrus pushed the chair and its apparently inert cargo past the reception desk. A white clad nurse with a stethoscope around her neck looked up and seemed about to protest. Garrus turned a stony glare on her and snapped in as imperious a manner as he could, "This woman requires immediate attention, move aside!"

Williams emitted a low pained-sounding groan and the nurse's eyes widened and she hustled out from behind her desk, waving Garrus over towards a set of double doors at the rear of the lobby area. "Through there, sir. A doctor will arrive soon to assist you."

"Thank you," Garrus replied as he pushed the chair through the doors. Once on the other side and out of view of the waiting area, Garrus paused outside the door marked Exam Room One and carefully peeked around the open door. "Clear," he said to Williams in a low voice. Williams, still playing the role of patient to the hilt merely groaned a bit more. Garrus quickly pushed the chair into the exam room and shut the door. As the turian reattached his eye piece, Williams sat upright, feeling her spine crackle and cast aside the blanket.

"God this thing _kills!_" she hissed as she all but flew from the chair and shoved it into a corner. The chair rebounded off the wall before rolling to a stop.

Garrus keyed his comm, "We're in," was all he said.

---

As promised, Shepard had used his Spectre status to gain access to the clinic blueprints and had located a rear service entrance that he and Bethany now stood outside, waiting for word from Garrus and Williams. Both he and Bethany were in full armour - she in her heavy-class Colossus suit and he in a lightweight Armax suit in a jungle-green camouflage pattern that did nothing to help him blend into the surroundings of grey Citadel hull metal. Then again, Bethany mused, her own black and red armour wasn't exactly helping her to maintain a low profile. Especially given the 'grafitti' scrawled across the cuirass in her own hand.

"Why do you do that?" Shepard asked, and pointed to the collection of quotes and phrases on her armour. _It's only illegal if you get caught_ read one.

She shrugged. "Because I can."

Shepard consulted the holographic head-up display generated by his hardsuit computer and displayed on the inside of his helmet visor. Zero contacts and the indicators for both his and his sister's hardsuits registered no armour breaches or operator trauma. So why did he feel so uneasy? Shepard turned to his older sister who was leaning with studied nonchalance against the wall of the clinic, beside the door. Her arms were crossed over her chest and her right ankle was crossed over her left.

"Beth," he said quietly and something in his voice made her stand up straight and turn to face him. He paused, trying to find the right words. "I just wanted to say...it's not too late to back out and tip off the authorities. If something happened to you..."

"Shhh," Bethany said softly and pressed the tip of her right index finger to his lips. "We can do this. We're not dealing with trained soldiers or gun-happy mercs. It's a bunch of mad surgeons with a sick sense of humour. We'll be fine. Trust me."

Shepard sighed as she removed her finger. "It's just that...you're my sister and I wasn't there for you when I needed to be and...you got hurt."

"BS," she hissed and pulled him close to look into his eyes. "You aren't my keeper, Augie. It isn't your job to...don't shake your head at me."

"We're family," he said simply and shrugged. "We look out for each other. I'm sorry I wasn't there."

"You're not gonna start self-flagellating yourself over this are you?" Bethany asked quietly. He shook his head, a slight smile tugging at his lips. "Good," she answered, "Because I imagine that'd be all kinds of painful...not to mention messy. You're here for me now, here and that's all I need. OK?"

"Yeah," he said quietly then again with more conviction. "Yeah."

Shepard put a hand to his helmet and nodded to himself. "Copy," he said into his comm unit. "That was Garrus," he told Bethany, "They're in."

"Let's rock," Bethany said. Shepard nodded and bent to look at the door controls.

"This won't take long," he assured her as his omni-tool bathed him in amber light. The control panel by the door turned from red to green as the maglocks snapped open. A short well-lit hallway led to a similar door. Signs on doors on either side of the hallway indicated store rooms and the incinerator for disposing of hazardous waste. Nobody else was around.

Sidearms in hand, Shepard and Bethany moved quickly to the next door.

---

Dr Robert O'Hara stood outside the closed door to Exam Room One and consulted his watch. He hoped this patient wouldn't take too much time; he'd already been on the clock almost twelve hours already. He pushed the door open and was greeted by a turian and young woman...both pointing guns at him.

"What the-?" O'Hara began. He never got a chance to finish speaking as the woman neatly cold-cocked him and the turian caught his body before it could hit the floor. Williams checked the man's pulse. "He's fine."

Shepard's voice sounded in their earpieces, "Williams, Garrus, we're in. Key into our suit beacons and rendezvous, over."

"Copy that, on our way."

Garrus eased open the exam room door and looked both ways. "Clear," he whispered. He and Williams slipped out, closing and locking the door behind them. Presently this area of the clinic was quiet but Garrus knew that wouldn't last long. Consulting the map display generated by his omni-tool, Garrus led Williams past rows of beds, pieces of medical equipment and exam cubicles partitioned by curtains.

The omni-tool's display led them to a door marked Staff Only. Williams covered Garrus as he opened the door and slipped through. Williams followed him. On the other side stood Shepard and Bethany.

"Have any problems getting in?" Shepard asked.

Garrus shook his head. "I'm somewhat disturbed by how willing humans are to overlook those they consider to be 'disabled' though."

Bethany shrugged. "What can I say? Humans are jerks." Surveying the hallway the four stood in she asked, "Where to now?"

Shepard consulted the floorplans. "I found a curious thing when I acquired these schematics. There's an entire surgical suite off the main clinic that isn't part of the original floorplans. I imagine that's where the surgery is conducted and where we'll find the perpetrators."

Bethany smiled and felt a mix of emotions: relief that soon this would be over, fear that something would go wrong, anger that she'd been put in this situation in the first place. And, struggling beneath all that, hope for the future.

---

Simons stood clad in his surgical gown, mask pulled up over his mouth and nose, hands scrubbed clean and sheathed in white latex. Really, they didn't have time for this, they should have completed loading the surgical gear and supplies and been off the station by now but...

"Karen here is to serve as an example of those who cross me," he said aloud to the surgical team as they prepped the traitorous bitch for surgery. First, he was going to take her kidneys, one at a time. Then everything else. He already had buyers lined up, very interested in her heart and lungs. Funny, she'd be much more valuable dead and harvested than alive. The said could be said of most everybody, he mused. Even the lowest bottom feeder would be worth far more dead than he could ever amount to alive.

Simons stood over the inert form of Karen O'Donohue. The woman's dark hair had been pulled back and concealed beneath a sterile cap and she'd been wired to monitors tracking her heart rate, blood pressure and O2 levels. Everything was just so.

"Scalpel," he said and his assistant placed the gleaming surgical steel implement into his gloved hand.

A chipper-sounding _bleep_ from the locked doors of the OR sounded moments before the doors themselves hissed open. Encroaching on the ordered quiet of the theatre were a number of booted footfalls as four armed figures burst into the room.

"What is the meaning of this?" Simons barked as he turned to face the interlopers. "This is a sterile area! You can't be here-" his words dried up along with the saliva in his mouth as the familiar looking redhead at the front of the assembly swung a compact shotgun up to aim at his chest. The surgical team gasped. The nurse assisting Simons screamed briefly before the sound gave way to startled sobs.

Several dots began connecting themselves in Simons' mind. The redhead in the lead was familiar because not so very long ago she'd lain where Karen was lying now, anaesthetised, her skin and flesh parting effortlessly under the razor's edge of the scalpel he wielded so skilfully. The man beside her Simons also recognised, this time from the vids - Commander Shepard. The other woman and the turian were unknown to him but he could not afford to dismiss them. Both aimed sidearms in two-handed grips. The muzzles of both weapons were aligned with his head.

The redhead spoke, her words bitten off one at a time, "Drop. The. Scalpel. Now."

Simons looked contemplatively at the woman before him for several heartbeats before his eyes flicked to the pristine instrument in his hand. When he spoke again, his voice was calm and well-modulated, "You possess quite beautiful organs, do you realise that?"

The woman barked harsh laughter for an instant before her eyes narrowed. Simons' keen gaze picked out the fine lines radiating out from the corners, the shadows beneath them. "I'll take that as a complement, Doctor. Most men are more interested in my boobs, so you're a refreshing change of pace. That said, drop the scalpel."

Simons sighed. Behind him, he could hear the minute sounds surgical gowns crinkling and shoes shuffling on the floor as his team shifted uneasily. "I don't suppose we can come to some kind of accommodation?" he asked.

The woman smiled, laugh lines appearing momentarily before her expression turned serious again. "The fact your insides aren't already decorating the wall behind you is about as accommodating as I'm prepared to go." Simons noted the way her right index finger tightened fractionally against the shotgun trigger as she took a deliberate step forward.

He sighed, "Very well," and placed the instrument on the tray from whence it had came.

---

_Suffering darkness in my eyes against the night of Rome  
I get confused and all I hear is just myself  
I will resign and search for peace of mind, I'm on my own  
I need to be alone and lost in this solitude_

Lacuna Coil, _Shallow Life_

Simons and his people were arrested, tried, jailed. With testimony from Charles Sinclair and Karen O'Donohue who were granted immunity from prosecution for their co-operation, the prosecution had one of the easiest cases in recent memory. The news-vids all hailed Commander Shepard for his tireless dedication in cracking this latest black market organ trade. Bethany was more than happy to let her brother take the credit. She was tired, just wanted the entire affair over and done with so she could move on.

_Move on to where though? _was a question she'd asked herself more than once and was asking herself again as she sat at her usual rear booth at Chora's, soda water before her, keeping an eye on the clientele and another on the vidscreen as it played the latest updates on the Simons case. He'd pleaded guilty and was going down for twenty-five years with no possibility of parole. Bethany thought he was getting off lightly. How many people had died due to the surgeries carried out by Simons? At least half a dozen that the authorities knew of. In a different context, Simons would be a multiple murder and be facing a long stay on death row before getting the needle.

"Are you OK?" her brother asked quietly. He and Williams sat opposite her in the booth. Dragging her out of her apartment had been Williams' idea. The Gunnery Chief had though Bethany could use cheering up.

"Not really," she confessed at length. "I mean, I'm grateful that you're spending time with me but..." she trailed off, tried to marshal her thoughts. "I thought bringing them down would have made me feel better, you know?"

Shepard nodded and squeezed her hand. Beth squeezed it back. "Instead I don't feel better. I don't feel anything. Nothing at all."

Bethany's eyes moved about in their sockets as she sized up the beings passing their table, searching for possible threats but Shepard could tell it was an automatic gesture. Part of Bethany wasn't there at all and it made him ache to see her like this. He took her hand again, wishing he could do something to make her feel better.

"Beth," said quietly. Her eyes, tired and bloodshot turned to him. "I don't know what I can say or do to make things easier on you but...I'm here for you if you ever need to talk or vent or need somebody to throw stuff at." Bethany's lips turned up in a small smile and Shepard felt better for it.

She inhaled through her nostrils and she felt her eyes widen. An idea had been born, fully formed in her mind, in the briefest of moments between one heart beat and the next and when she turned her gaze to meet her brother's, there was a renewed spark in them, a hint of who she'd been before she'd woken in that bathtub in what felt like another life.

"I need to get off-station," she said. Shepard nodded. "I want to serve on the _Normandy_ with you," she continued. Shepard's head paused mid-nod.

"What?" he blurted.

"Uh, isn't that against regs?" Williams put in.

"Beth, you aren't military anymore," Shepard said gently.

She laughed softly, swept a strand of hair from her forehead, "Neither were Liara or Tali. That never stopped you putting them in harm's way. Come on, brother, you know I can carry my own weight and God knows I could use some firm structure in my life. Left to my own devices...well."

Shepard sighed, "Williams is right. The brass won't just let you sign on with the crew."

Bethany raised her soda water to her lips and sipped. "I'm not asking the brass. I'm asking _you_. We can be some kind of butt-kicking double team like Starsky and Hutch, Cagney and Lacey, Luke and Obi Wan." She paused as the familiar expression of mixed confusion and exasperation dawned on Shepard's face. "And, as usual, all my twentieth-century pop culture references have just flown right over your head."

"What about Mister Darcy?" Williams asked. "You can't bring a dog on a ship."

"Your brought a krogan along, so why not?" Bethany quipped before she raised her hands in surrender. "Fine, fine, I can find somebody to look after him while we're off-station. Look, all I'm asking is that you think it over. Please? I know you can pull some strings and sign me on as an independent contractor or some such. I just need to be in a place with some stability and to be with people I can rely on."

Shepard turned to Williams and Bethany saw something pass between them, unspoken. It hung in the air between them for several seconds. Shepard sighed and the exhalation of breath was audible even over Chora's music and the drunken jeers of the patrons as they drank in the vista of half-naked women.

He turned back to Bethany and said, "Fine. _But_ there's a list of conditions attached to this longer than my arm...and believe me when I say that if you step out of line even once, I'll boot you off the ship and leave you to find your own way back home."

Bethany smiled and felt happier than she had in days. "You know I love it when you talk tough."

Shepard sighed again and the three began to talk terms.

The End

**A/N: **I'll admit I wasn't quite sure how to finish things off and a Happily Ever After ending just seemed wrong so I put Simons in the slammer for a good long time and left Bethany feeling a little lost and alone after everything. And I leave things open for a follow up if/when inspiration strikes.

Thanks to the readers and reviewers. To quote former boxer Jeff Fenech, "I love youse all."


End file.
